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arXiv:2509.18265 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Instability of Laughlin fractional quantum Hall liquids into gapless power-law correlated states with continuous exponents in ideal Chern bands: Rigorous results from plasma mapping

Saranyo Moitra, Inti Sodemann

Published Mar 9, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the fate of Laughlin's wave function in ideal Chern bands which can be mapped to generalized zero Landau levels in spatially dependent magnetic fields. By exploiting its exact mapping onto a classical Coulomb gas and leveraging previous results of one-component plasmas in nonuniform neutralizing backgrounds, we demonstrate that the ideal Laughlin wave function undergoes a phase transition from its well-known fully gapped topologically ordered plasma state into a power-law correlated dielectric state even for the fixed filling of 1 / 3 , as the magnetic field becomes increasingly more inhomogeneous. This dielectric state is gapless even though it does not spontaneously break translational symmetry. Remarkably, for a fixed filling ν = 1 / m , the exponent governing density correlations in this state changes continuously as a function of the degree of spatial inhomogeneity of the magnetic field, and can range from 4 near a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition to the plasma state, up to 2 m in the limit of fields generated by point solenoids.

DOI
10.1103/3y87-96dw

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We investigate the fate of Laughlin's wave function in ideal Chern bands which can be mapped to generalized zero Landau levels in spatially dependent magnetic fields. By exploiting its exact mapping onto a classical Coulomb gas and leveraging previous results of one-component plasmas in nonuniform neutralizing backgrounds, we demonstrate that the ideal Laughlin wave function undergoes a phase transition from its well-known fully gapped topologically ordered plasma state into a power-law correlated dielectric state even for the fixed filling of 1 / 3 , as the magnetic field becomes increasingly more inhomogeneous. This dielectric state is gapless even though it does not spontaneously break translational symmetry. Remarkably, for a fixed filling ν = 1 / m , the exponent governing density correlations in this state changes continuously as a function of the degree of spatial inhomogeneity of the magnetic field, and can range from 4 near a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition to the plasma state, up to 2 m in the limit of fields generated by point solenoids.
The fractional quantum Hall effect was experimentally discovered in 1982. It was observed that the Hall conductivity σyx of a two-dimensional electron system is quantized, σyx=e2/3h, in the vicinity of the Landau level filling factor ν=1/3. In 1983, Laughlin proposed a trial many-body wave function, which he claimed described a “new state of matter”—a homogeneous incompressible liquid with fractionally charged quasiparticles. Here, I develop an exact diagonalization theory that allows one to calculate the energy and other physical properties of the ground and excited states of a system of N two-dimensional Coulomb interacting electrons in a strong magnetic field. I analyze the energies, electron densities, and other physical properties of the systems with N≤7 electrons continuously as a function of magnetic field in the range 1/4≲ν<1. The results show that both the ground and excited states of the system resemble a sliding Wigner crystal whose parameters are influenced by the magnetic field. Energy gaps in the many-particle spectra appear and disappear as the magnetic field changes. I also calculate the physical properties of the ν=1/3 Laughlin state for N≤8 and compare the results with the exact ones. This comparison, as well as an analysis of some other statements published in the literature, show that the Laughlin state and its fractionally charged excitations do not describe the physical reality, neither at small N nor in the thermodynamic limit. The results obtained shed new light on the nature of the ground and excited states in the fractional quantum Hall effect.
Chern insulators are band insulators exhibiting a nonzero Hall conductance but preserving the lattice translational symmetry. We conclusively show that a partially filled Chern insulator at 1/3 filling exhibits a fractional quantum Hall effect and rule out charge-density wave states that have not been ruled out by previous studies. By diagonalizing the Hubbard interaction in the flat-band limit of these insulators, we show the following: The system is incompressible and has a 3-fold degenerate ground state whose momenta can be computed by postulating an generalized Pauli principle with no more than 1 particle in 3 consecutive orbitals. The ground state density is constant, and equal to 1/3 in momentum space. Excitations of the system are fractional statistics particles whose total counting matches that of quasiholes in the Laughlin state based on the same generalized Pauli principle. The entanglement spectrum of the state has a clear entanglement gap which seems to remain finite in the thermodynamic limit. The levels below the gap exhibit counting identical to that of Laughlin 1/3 quasiholes. Both the 3 ground states and excited states exhibit spectral flow upon flux insertion. All the properties above disappear in the trivial state of the insulator - both the many-body energy gap and the entanglement gap close at the phase transition when the single-particle Hamiltonian goes from topologically nontrivial to topologically trivial. These facts clearly show that fractional many-body states are possible in topological insulators.
We consider the lowest Landau level on a torus as a function of its circumference L 1 . When L 1 → 0, the ground state at general rational filling fraction is a crystal with a gap—a Tao–Thouless state. For filling fractions ν = p /(2 pm + 1), these states are the limits of Laughlin's or Jain's wavefunctions describing the gapped quantum Hall states when L 1 → ∞ . For the half-filled Landau level, there is a transition to a Fermi sea of non-interacting neutral fermions (dipoles), or rather to a Luttinger liquid modification thereof, at L 1 ∼ 5 magnetic lengths. Using exact diagonalization we identify this state as a version of the Rezayi–Read state, and find that it develops continuously into the state that is believed to describe the observed metallic phase as L 1 → ∞ . Furthermore, the effective Landau level structure that emerges within the lowest Landau level is found to be a consequence of the magnetic symmetries.
Quantum Hall systems have a one-body energy spectrum consisting of dispersion-less Landau levels. Electron-electron interactions thus dominate in partially filled Landau levels, which exhibit a myriad of strongly correlated phases such as quantum hall ferromagnets and fractional quantum Hall phases. We study two examples of these phenomena. In the first project, we explore the ground state of a system with an interface between two semi-infinite regions with fillings ν= 4 and ν= 3 respectively. The width of the interface can be controlled by varying the background potential, which provides an additional tuning parameter. For a certain range of interaction strengths, the ν= 4 bulk is unpolarized whereas the ν= 3 bulk is fully polarized. In the parameter space spanned by the interaction strength and width of the interface, we find two phases at the interface. Phase A has spin as a good quantum number, and the long-wavelength spin edge excitations are gapped. In phase B, spin rotation symmetry is spontaneously broken at the mean-field level. Using symmetry arguments we find the effective theory near the interface of phase B. This effective theory is known to have gapless long-wavelength spin excitations. In the second project, we study the ground state of a tunnel-decoupled double-layer graphene system when both layers are undoped. We find a simple Hamiltonian in the continuum limit from symmetries of the system. Using the Hartree-Fock approximation we find a state with inter-layer coherence with broken layer U(1) symmetry. This phase becomes magnetized in presence of a non-zero Zeeman field. A first-order phase transition can be driven from the ferromagnetic phase to the magnetized inter-layer coherent phase by increasing the Zeeman field. We predict the number of gapless modes in the bulk.
We consider spin-polarized electrons in a single Landau level on a torus. The quantum Hall problem is mapped onto a one-dimensional lattice model with lattice constant $2\ensuremath{\pi}/{L}_{1}$, where L1{L}_{1}L1​ is a circumference of the torus (in units of the magnetic length). In the Tao-Thouless limit ${L}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, the interacting many-electron problem is exactly diagonalized at any rational filling factor $\ensuremath{\nu}=p/q\ensuremath{\le}1$. For odd qqq, the ground state has the same qualitative properties as a bulk $({L}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty})$ quantum Hall hierarchy state and the lowest-energy quasiparticle excitations have the same fractional charges as in the bulk. These states are the ${L}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ limits of the Laughlin and Jain wave functions for filling fractions where these exist. We argue that the exact solutions generically, for odd qqq, are continuously connected to the two-dimensional bulk quantum Hall hierarchy states---i.e., that there is no phase transition as ${L}_{1}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ for filling factors where such states can be observed. For even-denominator fractions, a phase transition occurs as L1{L}_{1}L1​ increases. For $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ this leads to the system being mapped onto a Luttinger liquid of neutral particles at small but finite L1{L}_{1}L1​; this then develops continuously into the composite fermion wave function that is believed to describe the bulk $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ system. The analysis generalizes to non-Abelian quantum Hall states.
Emergent QED3_33​ at the bosonic Laughlin state to superfluid transition
Quantum phase transitions between topologically ordered and symmetry-broken phases lie beyond Landau theory. A prime example is the conjectured continuous transition from the bosonic ν=1/2ν= 1/2ν=1/2 Laughlin state to a superfluid, proposed to be governed by a QED3_33​--Chern--Simons (CS) critical point whose stability remains uncertain. We study half-filled bosons in the lowest Landau level subject to a lattice potential. Infinite-cylinder DMRG reveals a single continuous Laughlin--to--superfluid transition. Adiabatic flux insertion collapses the many-body gap and exposes massless Dirac quasiparticles, while momentum-resolved correlation lengths show that three lattice-related density modes share the same critical exponent, evidencing an emergent SO(3)SO(3)SO(3) symmetry. The joint appearance of Dirac dispersion and symmetry enlargement provides microscopic support for a stable QED3_33​--CS fixed point. Our numerical strategy also offers a blueprint for exploring Landau-forbidden transitions in fractional Chern insulators and composite Fermi liquids realised in moire and cold-atom systems.